Greg McGarity grows tired of getting punched.

As much of an unabashed proponent of openness and transparency as I am, I can’t say I blame Greg McGarity for feeling like this:

“I think I’ve got a good pulse of what’s going on internally, and I don’t sense there are team-related issues that are of major concern,” athletic director Greg McGarity said. “We’ve got some spots where we need tightening up, but that’s true with every program.”

But McGarity is aware of the perception.

“We’re getting beat up a lot — and maybe we can do some things where we don’t have to get beat up so much,” he said.

Elaborating: McGarity said Georgia may begin a practice of not announcing any disciplinary action of players, unless there’s a legal issue that would make it unavoidable.

“If you announce that somebody has violated team policy today, you have to read about it for five months before the first game,” McGarity said. “Do we need to put ourselves in that position?”

Schultz says the problem is that information like that tends to leak out to the media anyway – a compliant Alabama media begs to differ with him on that point, by the way – but I suspect the bigger problem here is that such a policy would dramatically cut down on the number of AJ-C posts on the subject.  The paper’s fish for hits marketing approach would take a hit.  (To be fair, the AJ-C is far from the only local media outlet which devotes plenty of attention to the subject.  It just tends to be the most sarcastic.)

McGarity’s also got a point that the internal reality of program discipline may very well be quite different from the public perception, but that comes with the territory of what people tend to pay attention to.  Regardless of whether you hear about it once or five times, bad news sells.

As far as controlling the message, though, if Schultz’ opening paragraph is an example of how McGarity’s done that by being open with the information, I can hardly see how keeping quiet could produce worse results.  Schultz’ whole piece is a self-refutation of his argument.

Like I said, this isn’t what I’d like to see McGarity do.  Less information is bad for blogging.  But I get where the man is coming from.

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UPDATE:  Elkon raises the obvious question about how much any of this should matter in the first place.

… As I learned when I wrote about Georgia’s drug policy, UGA’s strict approach to marijuana use is the result of a school-wide effort to deter drug and excessive alcohol use. Mark Richt did not implement the policy based on a belief that casual marijuana use is bad for team morale or on-field performance. Indeed, he is not the one who implemented the policy in the first place. If that would have been his rationale, then Florida’s experience under Meyer would completely refute it. As it is, Hayes’ article should be mandatory reading for someone like Jeff Schultz, whose angle on Georgia football seems to be that the police blotter reflects that Mark Richt has lost total control over the team and the loss of control is affecting results on the field. Meyer managed to win a pair of national titles with off-field issues that put Georgia’s scooter issues to shame.